Lake McDonald-Kelly's Camp

NPS Form 10-9003 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
REGISTRATION FORM
1. Name of Property
historic name: Kelly’s Camp Historic District
other name/site number:
2. Location
street & number: South of Kelly’s Camp Rd between Kelly’s Ck and bay S of cabins, Glacier National Park
not for publication: n/a
city/town: Lake McDonald vicinity: X
state: Montana code: MT county: Flathead code: 029 zip code: 59921
3. State/Federal Agency Certification
As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1986, as amended, I hereby certify that this nomination request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant nationally statewide locally. ( See continuation sheet for additional comments.)
________________________________________________________________ ____________________
Signature of certifying official/Title Date
Montana State Historic Preservation Office
State or Federal agency or bureau
In my opinion, the property ____ meets _____ does not meet the National Register criteria.
_______________________________________________________________________ ______________________
Signature of commenting or other official Date
_________________________________________
State or Federal agency and bureau
4. National Park Service Certification
I, hereby certify that this property is:
Signature of the Keeper
Date of Action
______ entered in the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ determined eligible for the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ determined not eligible for the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ removed from the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ other (explain)
Kelly’s Camp Historic District Flathead County, Montana
Name of Property County and State
5. Classification
Ownership of Property: Private; Public-federal Number of Resources within Property 27
Category of Property: District Contributing Non-contributing
Number of contributing resources previously listed 12 13 building(s)
In the National Register: 0 1 site(s)
1 structure(s)
objects(s)
Name of related multiple property listing:
Recreational camps on Lake McDonald, 1892-1970 14 13 TOTAL
6. Function or Use
Historic Functions:
DOMESTIC: Camp
Current Function:
DOMESTIC: Camp
7. Description
Architectural Classification:
MATERIALS:
OTHER: Rustic Style
Foundation: log, concrete
Walls: log, frame
Roof: cedar shakes, metal, asphalt shingles
Other: brick
Narrative Description:
Kelly’s Camp, located on the west shore of Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, Flathead County, Montana, developed as a summer tourist cabin resort from an earlier homestead claim. It retains integrity of design, materials, setting, and workmanship dating to its development as a cabin resort (ca.1905-1935) even though the former 26-acre property is now divided into 23 parcels with eight different owners, including the federal government. Kelly’s Camp embodies roughly 2,400 feet of waterfront along Lake McDonald, including a small, shallow bay. Its entire length is fringed by a mixed coniferous forest, and most of the buildings are partially hidden from view from the lake by these woods. An unpaved access road runs behind the row of cabins, ending behind Cabin 00 at the north end. The camp is reached by a rough dirt road originating at the Going-to-the-Sun Road and paralleling the lake shore around the head of the lake.
The Kelly’s Camp Historic District encompasses twelve rustic log buildings overlooking the shoreline, including ten housekeeping summer cabins, a larger house, and a small cabin used as a washhouse. Frame buildings dating to the period of significance include a generator house, a shed, a pavilion used as a work shed, and ten privies. There is also an open air chapel reached by a wooden footbridge crossing Kelly’s Creek.
The Kelly’s Camp log buildings, excepting one, stand in a row set within the trees and facing the lake. Each rests on a banked foundation of doubled log piers; the outer piers support the log walls and the inner piers support the floor system. Open porches span the fronts, or lake sides, and provide views of the lake. Utility areas are placed at ground level at the back of each cabin. Most of the cabins have frame additions to the rear that house showers and toilets. The cabins retain brick or stovepipe chimneys, usually set near the center of the ridge, designed to draft woodburning stoves and kitchen ranges. Most of the log cabins retain their interior finishes. The inside surface of the log walls are hewn with a broadaxe or adze and the spaces between the logs are covered with narrow staves to create a fairly smooth wood surface. Interior partitions are stud walls with milled beadboard.
See continuation pages for Section 7 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Flathead County, Montana
Name of Property County and State
8. Statement of Significance
Applicable National Register Criteria: A and C
Areas of Significance: Entertainment/Recreation; Architecture
Criteria Considerations (Exceptions): n/a
Period(s) of Significance: ca.1894-1959
Significant Person(s):
Significant Dates:
Cultural Affiliation:
Architect/Builder: Frank Kelly; Verne Kelly
Narrative Statement of Significance
Kelly’s Camp is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A and C as a representative example of a cabin resort on Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, Flathead County, Montana. The Glacier National Park Multiple Property Document (MPD) for “Recreational Camps on Lake McDonald, 1892-1970” provides the historic context for the development of such wilderness recreational properties. Cabin resorts run by Harvey Dimon Apgar and Frank Geduhn opened on Lake McDonald before 1900. Other entrepreneurs, including Frank and Emmeline Kelly, followed in the early 1920s, capitalizing on increased automobile traffic in the park. They developed the resort called Kelly’s Camp on part of the tract on which Frank Kelly filed a homestead claim in 1894, and for which he received a patent for 55 acres in 1917. The Kellys sold the undeveloped southern half of the property to Fannie Hollingsworth in 1926.1 She transferred it to her daughter and son-in-law, Cecilia and Horace Chadbourne in 1927 and 1930. The MPD also describes the architecture associated with such properties on Lake McDonald. Like many cabin resort buildings constructed on Lake McDonald in this era, most of Kelly’s Camp’s buildings are log cabins constructed of locally available materials, augmented with milled lumber and fittings like sash, doors, and stoves. The Kelly’s Camp property continued as a single parcel until 1962, when Frank Kelly’s daughter-in-law and her daughters began dividing the property, selling most of the rental cabins to longtime visitors. Though the cabins now stand on individually owned lots, Kelly’s Camp retains an extraordinary degree of architectural integrity of design, materials, workmanship, setting, and feeling dating to its use as a cabin resort.
Summary History of Development
Frank Kelly came to the Lake McDonald region in 1893, at roughly the same time as fellow homesteaders Frank C. Geduhn and Denis Comeau and a little later than homesteaders Charles Howes and Milo B. Apgar. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, of Irish parents in 1855, Kelly worked primarily as a carpenter in the upper Midwest, but also as a raftman on the Mississippi. At nineteen, he moved to Minnesota. In 1883, he came west to Livingston, Montana, with the Northern Pacific Railroad. He also worked in California and Astoria, Oregon. Kelly came to the Belton area to run a portable sawmill for the Great Northern Railway, and staked his homestead claim on the west shore of Lake McDonald, about two miles from the north end, in March 1894,2 locating it in Lots 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 19 North.3 L.O. Vaught said that Kelly chose his homestead site in 1894 for its morning light, but the bay, the stream, and good timber must also have played a role in his choice.4
See continuation pages for Section 8
1 Fannie Hollingsworth, Journal for 1922-1926. (Private collection). Hollingsworth recorded making payments to Kelly and completing the documents in the fall of 1926, as the was completing her cabin at Hollybourne south of Kelly’s Camp.
2 L.O. Vaught, History of Glacier (unpublished manuscript, n.d): 439. (Glacier National Park Archives (GPNA): West Glacier, Montana)
3 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 19 North. (Plat Room, Flathead County, Kalispell, Montana)
4 L.O. Vaught, History of Glacier, 439. Kelly’s Camp Historic District Flathead County, Montana
Name of Property County and State
9. Major Bibliographic References
See continuation pages
Previous documentation on file (NPS):
Primary Location of Additional Data:
___ preliminary determination of individual listing (36 CFR 67) has been requested.
__ State Historic Preservation Office
___ previously listed in the National Register
___ Other State agency
___ previously determined eligible by the National Register
_x_ Federal agency: Glacier National Park Archives
___ designated a National Historic Landmark
___ Local government
___ recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey # __________
___ University
___ recorded by Historic American Engineering Record # __________
___ Other – National Archives, Denver
10. Geographical Data
Acreage of Property: 6.5 acres
UTM References:
Zone
Easting
Northing
(NAD27)
12
286190
5389796
Verbal Boundary Description
Kelly’s Camp lies between the shore and the Kelly’s Camp Road. It includes about one acre east of Kelly’s Creek and land west of the creek running to a property line northeast of a small bay. For the southwestern part of the district, the boundary is drawn following the camp drive running behind the cabins. The property includes the following parcels identified in the Flathead County plat book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North as 1D, 1DA, 1G, 1GA, 1J, 1M, 1N, 1Q, 1QA, 1QB, 1QC, 1QD, and 1QG.
Boundary Justification
The boundary is drawn to encompass the portion of Frank Kelly’s homestead that he developed as a seasonal tourist cabins resort called Kelly’s Camp.
11. Form Prepared By
name/title: Jessie A. Ravage
organization: date: 10 February 2006
street & number: 34 Delaware Street telephone: 607.547-9507
city or town: Cooperstown state: New York zip code: 13326
Property Owner
See continuation page
Additional Documentation
See continuation pages, photographs, and mapsNPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 7 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 1
Flathead County, Montana
Big House (ca.1910, contributing building): The Big House is the largest of all the buildings at Kelly’s Camp. It stands near the north end of the site. While it is set within the same line as the log housekeeping cabins, no large trees hide it from view from the lake. The remnants of a flower garden—iris, daisies, and poppies in cobblestone lined beds—struggle in the unmown grass. The Big House was built in two phases using unpeeled, notched western larch and red spruce logs daubed with clay from the lakebed. Both blocks stand on banked foundations of log piers. First built was the one-and-a-half-story, southeastern, frontal gable block. The later, side-gabled wing was added to its northeast side, and its roof was cross-gabled into that of the first block. The roofs have deep eaves with exposed log rafter tails. The roofs of both blocks are extended over a shed-roofed porch with log posts and a lattice railing spanning the front façade. This is reached by wood plank steps at each end of the porch’s deck. The Big House retains its regular fenestration plan with plain, rough board trim and six-light sash. Some sash are double hung, while others slide horizontally. Two wood doors with vertical panels enter the cabin from the porch. Both these and the sash appear to be mill stock. A small brick stove chimney straddles the ridgeline. Inside, the Big House has a large room on the main floor in the older block, which was used an office for running the resort. In the later block, the main floor has a large living area and a kitchen. Stairs run upstairs to bedrooms above.
Camp shop (ca.1910-20, contributing building): The shop is an open-walled pavilion built using log pole supports, log plates, and log purlins. The gable roof is covered with asphalt shingles. The north quarter was enclosed with clapboard siding (ca.1960) to provide closed storage space for tools. A wood plank door opens into it from under the roofed section. The structure was used for cutting and stacking firewood for the camp. It stands southwest of the Big House.
Cabin 00 (ca.1925-1930, contributing building): Cabin 00 is the northernmost of the housekeeping cabins and the only side-gabled one. It is constructed of unpeeled, notched western larch and red spruce logs daubed with clay from the lake bed. The shake roof was replaced with a metal roofing after a 2003 wildland fire threatened Kelly’s Camp. An open porch sheltered by a shed-roofed extension of the main roof is supported by log posts and spans the long wall on the lake side of the cabin. The porch railing is made of unpeeled logs, and plank steps are set at the end of the deck. The entrance door from the porch is offset and framed with rough cut boards, as are the window openings. The windows are paired two-over-two sash, some double hung and some in horizontally sliding casings. A second door enters the back, or non-lakeside, of Cabin 00, into a later frame toilet and bath area. The main entrance opens into a common area. A sleeping loft reached by narrow stairs occupies the north end of the building, with a bedroom below. The kitchen is at the back of the cabin.
Generator house (ca.1927, contributing structure): Northeast of Cabin 00, where the creek flows into Lake McDonald, is the gable-roofed frame generator house. It has vertical flushboard siding and an asphalt shingle roof. In the creek, a still-operating turbine powers the generator, which provides power to all the cabins.
Woodshed (ca.1910, contributing building): Behind Cabin 00 stands a single-story, windowless, gable-roofed shed sided with cedar shakes.
Shower and laundry house (ca.1905-1910, contributing building): Between Cabin 00 and the Big House, stands a small, single-story, gable-roofed cabin constructed of notched logs with a small frame addition to its northwest corner. The building has a shake roof and paneled wood door. Kelly descendants state that this was the homestead cabin, later redesigned as a shower and laundry house. The addition provided space for the hot water heater. Clothes lines of heavy wire strung along “trees” constructed of logs and boards stand nearby.
Root cellar (ca.1905-10, contributing building): Between Cabin 00 and the Big House are the remains of a log that was built into the slope. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 7 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 2
Flathead County, Montana
Southwest of the Big House, Cabins 1 through 8 stand in a row set behind the trees fringing the beach. All eight of these housekeeping cabins were designed for rental and built over a period of approximately fifteen years, from about 1920 to about 1935. Some are larger than others and have slightly different interior layouts. Except for Cabin 3, which is built of unpeeled cedar logs, and Cabin 8, built of peeled larch (a.k.a. tamarack) logs, these frontal gable cabins were all constructed of unpeeled western larch and red spruce logs and daubed with clay from the lake bed. Like the Big House and Cabin 00, they had hewn interior log walls and beadboard partitions. All have the characteristic two-part, log pier banked foundations and open porches set under the extended frontal gable roof. These porches are reached by plank steps on the outside and by center entrances from the cabin interiors. Stock paneled doors and a combination of two-over-two double hung sash on the façade and horizontal sash on the sidewalls were used originally, and most cabins retain these. A Kelly signature was the decorative row of narrow-caliper, unpeeled logs set in the gable end above the lakeside porch, matching the front porch railings.
Cabins 1, 2, 3 and 4 (ca.1920-1925, contributing buildings): These nearly identical cabins appear much as they did at the time of their construction. They retain their frontal gable forms, open porches facing the lake, and original fenestration using two-over-two sash and paired sliding sash set in frames with rough board trim. Their notched log walls retain the bark. The shake roofs were replaced with metal roofing in the 1960s. Small masonry chimneys are set at the center of the ridgelines. Each cabin has a small, shed-roofed frame addition spanning the back of the cabin to provide space for indoor plumbing. These were added in the post-World War II era. The addition on Cabin 4 has been replaced with a slightly larger new addition of board-and-batten siding and the roof extended to the north to create a cover for the door. Cabin 4 also has a shed roof addition spanning approximately one-half the length of the west wall. The addition is placed on log piers and the porch was extended across the front of the addition, thus maintaining the characteristic open porch facing the lake. The posts and porch railings replicate the historic design.
Cabins 5 and 6 (ca.1920-1930, non-contributing buildings): Cabins 5 and 6 remain, but no longer retain integrity of design. They were rehabilitated between 2000 and 2005 by individual owners using the same builder. Both sides of each cabin have substantial additions enclosed with drop siding and the historically visible log pier supports have been enclosed. The early, rear addition on Cabin 5 has been replaced with larger, more elaborate addition. Cabin 6 retains its open front and back porches with the characteristic Kelly lattice in the overhanging gable. Like many cabins around Lake McDonald, these cabins have new metal roofs.
Cabin 6 guest cabin and dog house (ca.2003, non-contributing building): This is a single-story, gable-roofed, frame cabin with drop siding on concrete piers. It has metal-framed windows and a sliding glass door.
Cabins 7 and 8 (ca.1920-1930, contributing buildings): Cabins 7 and 8 retain a high degree of architectural integrity. They retain their frontal gable forms, open porches facing the lake, and original fenestration using two-over-two sash and paired sliding sash set in frames with rough board trim survive. Both have open back porches set under the overhanging gables, which have vertical log details in their gable ends matching those on the fronts of cabins. Small masonry chimneys designed for stoves are centered on the ridges. Cabin 7 has recently been roofed with metal; cabin 8 is roofed with asphalt shingles.
Chapel (ca.1945, possibly earlier, contributing site): Kelly’s Camp also includes an open air chapel built on the north side of the creek and reached by a narrow wooden bridge over the watercourse. The chapel has half-log seats arranged in a rough circle facing a small lectern.
Privies (undated, non-contributing buildings): Five pairs of shed-roofed, frame privies stand on the slope behind Cabins 00, 2, 4, 5, and 6. These have flushboard siding and asphalt shingled roofs. Their date of construction is unknown. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 3
Flathead County, Montana
In 1897, Kelly married Emmeline Haworth, the widow of the Great Northern Railway’s section foreman at Belton and a relation of Jessie Cunningham, who married Harvey Dimon Apgar at the foot of the lake in 1901. The Kellys’ wedding picture was taken in Spokane, Washington, farther west on the Great Northern line. Mrs. Kelly had a three-year-old son, Vernon “Vern”, from a previous marriage, and Kelly adopted him at least so far as giving him his last name.5 One version of family lore relates that the Kellys spent their first winter of marriage living in the small log cabin that Kelly later remodeled as a wash house for his cabin camp,6 but Vernon Kelly told L.O. Vaught that they lived in Columbia Falls, where Frank Kelly worked as a sawyer in one of the sawmills in 1897, and that as a toddler he spent only the summer of 1896 on Lake McDonald until the family returned in 1904 or 1905. In between, Kelly worked three years in a mill in Sedan (now Kila), Montana (west of Kalispell on the Great Northern), and then moved farther west to Milan, Washington (north of Spokane), for at least another year.
The Kellys were back on the lake, however, for the winter of 1905-1906, when Frank Kelly built a 35-foot gas-powered launch, which he christened the “Emmeline” in honor of his wife. The new boat, launched from Apgar on the 1st of June 1906, provided Kelly with easy access to his claim, and also opened up commercial opportunities for him, as she filled the space left by the recently decommissioned “F.I. Whitney.”7 Kelly and Orville Denny became partners in the boat business about 1912 when Denny brought the “Cassie D.” to Lake McDonald and set up a dock in Apgar on land bought from Charles Howes.8 A few years later, John E. Lewis, owner of the Glacier Hotel across the lake from Kelly’s, bought out Denny’s share. Soon after, Kelly and Lewis built the “Ethel” at Apgar and launched her.9 Jointly, they brought a third boat, the “City of Polson,” from Flathead Lake a year later and renamed her “Lewtana.” They ran all four boats until about 1918, when Kelly bought out Lewis’s share.10 In January 1919, Kelly was seeking to sell his property, encompassing about three-quarters of a mile of lake frontage for $15,000, as a way to get out of the boat business, which was barely paying expenses. 11 Unsuccessful with the sale, Frank Kelly ran all four boats, sometimes with Vern, until the fall of 1921, when he sold the boat business alone to Rollo C. Abell. Frank Kelly bought the “Emmeline” back soon after, and she ran through the 1936 season, providing transportation to the Kelly’s resort.12
A chronology of the development of Kelly’s Camp is more elusive than that of the boat company, even though the two enterprises were almost certainly linked by developments prompted by park policy. Stephen Mather, the first director of the newly founded National Park Service in 1916, urged auto road development to
5 Gonhild “Bud” Henderson, Historical Interview, 25 August 1977. (GPA). Frank Kellenbeck, Frank Kelly’s great-grandson, has a copy of their wedding photograph.
6 Frank Kellenbeck, Interview by author, 19 July 2005. Another story, told by Frank’s brother, Robert, is that Frank Kelly was “shanghaied” from San Francisco and taken round the world via Cape Horn on a sailing ship, eventually landing in a British harbor, where he swam to an American ship, and begged to be signed on for the voyage to New York City. From there, he worked his way across the continent back to his claim on Lake McDonald. This story doesn’t fit with other seemingly more likely information supplied to L.O. Vaught by Vernon Kelly.
7 When John and Olive Lewis bought Snyder’s Glacier House hotel for the 1906 season, they discontinued the “F.I. Whitney” on Lake McDonald.
8 Subdivision Book “H,” Hollybourne. (Plat Room, Flathead County Courthouse. Kalispell, Montana)
9 The “Ethel” was named for one of the Kellys’ nieces, who was recorded living with them in the 1920 federal census. Mrs. Horace (Cecilia) Chadbourne, History of Apgar, [n.p., n.d.]. 52.
10 Entire chronology for the boat business is taken from: L.O. Vaught. Notes (or transcription) from Vernon Kelly, undated. L.O. Vaught papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GPA).
11 Frank Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 29 January 1919. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 2, folder 11. (GPA)
12 Notes from Vernon Kelly, undated. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 1, folder 11. (GPA). NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 4
Flathead County, Montana
accommodate the nation’s newest holiday trend.13 With the opening of the highway along the east side of Lake McDonald in the early 1920s, demand for boat transportation to the hotel and the Geduhn’s cabin resort at the head of the lake decreased, but interest in inexpensive cabin lodgings increased. Several Lake McDonald residents, Frank Kelly among them, began building to accommodate the influx of auto travelers in the 1920s.
Horace Chadbourne, whose mother-in-law Fannie Hollingsworth started visiting Kelly’s Camp in 1922,14 wrote that the Kellys had seven rental cabins by about 1925, and that they were building one per year.15 Working backwards, that might place the outset of the guest cabin business in 1919, about the time when Kelly was tiring of the boat business and considering selling out. That Kelly made no mention of guest cabins, an obvious asset, in 1919, suggests he had not begun building them. Further, the trouble Kelly had acquiring his patent suggests that he had done little to “improve” his claim, under the conditions of the Homestead Act of 1862. When the park was formed on the 11th of May 1910, homestead claims were no longer subject to settlement and entry. 16 While Kelly claimed settlement in March 1894, A.W. Swaney, Registrar of the Land Office noted that Kelly’s claim had been cancelled on the 27th of October 1909.17 Kelly was one of eight claimants for whom an act was proposed in Congress in 1914 that allowed their claims to be patented.18 Kelly duly received a patent for his holdings in Lots 2, 3, and 4 (totaling 54.86 acres), a reduction of his original claim, on the 10th of May 1917.19
Kelly sold two parcels totaling half of his patent to Fannie Hollingsworth, who stayed at Kelly’s Camp during the summer of 1922. They closed on 11 acres in Lot 4 in 192620, despite his earlier reluctance to divide his 55-acre tract, and the deed was filed in 1927.21 This purchase may have helped finance Kelly’s development of the camp in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Frank Kellenbeck says it helped buy the generator for the resort.22 Beginning in the fall of 1926, Fannie Hollingsworth began building the cabin called ��Hollybourne,” joining her surname with that of her son-in-law. Horace and his wife Cecilia Hollingsworth Chadbourne played a large role in its construction, along with Mart Sibley and Asa Powell, Sr., of Apgar. In 1930, Kelly sold the adjacent 17.87 acres to the north in Lot 3 to Chadbourne, which he platted into a 32-parcel subdivision, also called Hollybourne. Some of these lots hosted tent campers, but none ever had permanent buildings. By 1934, Cecilia Chadbourne held title to both parcels, when she sold them to the federal government, which agreed to a life lease for the property. She also held title to a homestead (Entry no.325) of 113.35 acres on the North Fork.23
Kelly’s Camp was in full swing by 1931, and the Kellys hoped to continue with it despite a policy established by federal legislation in 1917 to acquire all privately owned land in the park. Referring to federal appropriations
13 C.W. Buchholtz, Man in Glacier (West Glacier, Montana: Glacier Natural History Association, 1976, 3rd printing, 1999): 58.
14 Fannie E. Hollingsworth, Journal for 1922-1926. (Family collection)
15 Horace Chadbourne, History of Apgar, [n.p., n.d.]: 48.
16 James Wilson, Secretary, Department of Agriculture to the Secretary of the Interior, 8 June 1912. Land Records Files, Box 1, Folder 12. (GPA). According to this letter, all applicants on record who were described for examination and listing under the previous act of 11th of June 1906 (amendment to the Homestead Act of 1862) within the park were cancelled by the district forester and the applicants notified that said lands were no longer subject to settlement and entry.
17 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North. (Flathead County Courthouse, Kalispell, Montana)
18 Proposed Bill S.A. 320, 13 February 1914, to allow the homestead entries of Howard E. Jones, Ernest R. Henthorn, Daniel C. Doverspike, Ora Reeves, Louis N. Fournier, Pat Doyle, and Frank Kelly. Land Records, Box 1, Folder 16. (GPA)
19 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33, Range 18 North.
20 Hollingsworth, Journal.
21 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North.
22 Frank Kellenbeck, Interview by author, 19 July 2995.
23 Mrs. Horace (Cecilia) Chadbourne, History of Apgar, [n.p., n.d.]: 52-53. While Mrs. Chadbourne’s contribution to the history suggests she and her husband built the cabin, Fannie Hollingsworth’s journal, written at the time, makes it clear that Hollingsworth was paying the bills, owned the land, and had hired Horace to work for her. The General Report of the Investigation of 50 Per Cent Purchases of Private Lands in Glacier National Park. USDOI, NPS, Glacier National Park. (GNPA), records the Chadbourne transactions. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 5
Flathead County, Montana
made in the early 1930s to purchase property at 50% valuation, Emmeline “Liney” Kelly noted in March 1931, “The government hasn’t offered to buy us out yet. We are sure that it would be hard for us to find a place we like as well or felt at home like we do hear [sic.].” Mrs. Kelly continued, saying that the 1930 Great Northern Railway’s purchase of the Lewises’ Glacier Hotel (now the Lake McDonald Lodge) would probably improve their business “as [the Railway’s] prices are almost too high for people who want to keep house.” At the end of the letter, she provided details of Kelly’s Camp’s lodgings:
Our small cottages are furnished with 2 full size beds and plenty of everything for a Party of 4. They are $60.00 a month $150.00 for season of 3 months our larger cottages have 3 full size beds and every thing for a Party of 6. They are $100.00 a month $250.00 for the season. We furnish every thing for housekeeping but your food. Wood and electricity included and I do the cabin laundry. Spring water piped to each cabin. Frank makes 1 trip a day across to the store at the hotel after groceries and mail. And any one that wants to go on that trip can, and there is no charge. The fare for all extry [sic.] trips is .25¢ each way per person. Frank makes an extry trip any time one wants him to.24
Kelly’s Camp’s present day appearance, with a few exceptions, was established by this period. Standing in a row facing the lake, there were nine or ten rental cabins, numbered 00 to 8, in addition to the Kelly’s Big House.25 Frank and Liney Kelly occupied the Big House year round in this period. Verne and Helen’s two daughters, Jean Kelly Kellenbeck and Joan Kelly Berry, grew up on at Lake McDonald, going to the Apgar School. When they entered high school, the younger Kellys moved into Kalispell in the winter as Apgar School only went to eighth grade. Further south around the bay were the Bay Cabin and the Chadbournes’ Hollybourne and Sun Cabin. One more Kelly building called the Halfway Cabin stood in between the Bay Cabin and the Chadbourne cabins.
All of the Kelly cabins were built to withstand difficult winters even though most were designed only for summer use. The outer log walls were supported on heavy cedar log piers, while the floor system rested on a separate set of piers to allow the floor to float independently of the walls and reduce buckling. With the exception of Cabin 3, which was built of cedar logs, the rest of the cabins were built using larch and some red spruce logs. The cabins were “chinked,” or daubed, using fine glacial silt from the bottom of the lake. All had cedar shake roofs, probably split from local trees. The cabins vary somewhat in size and style, but with the exception of the cross-gabled Big House and side-gabled “00,” they are all frontal gable buildings resting on piers with open porches facing the lake.
The cabins began with open back porches, most of which were later enclosed to house a shower and indoor sink sometime after the mid-twentieth century. Side additions were also later added to Cabins 4, 5, and 6. Two of the larger cabins (00 and 1) had sleeping lofts and a single bedroom on the main floor. Cabins 2, 3, and 4 were large cabins and had two bedrooms on the main floor. The smaller cabins (5, 6, and 7) probably had a bed in each of the two rooms on the main floor. Cabin 8 had just three rooms, including a bedroom. Like 00 and 1, the Bay Cabin had a sleeping loft. The latter cabin was used as a year round cabin during the 1920s by trapper Frank Sherburne
24 Emmeline Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 7 March 1931. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 2, Folder 11. (GPA). In a letter signed by A.E. Demary, Acting Director of the National Park Service dated the 15th of September 1930, he outlined the expenditure of nearly all of the $198,000 allocated by Congress to buy out inholders in 1930 after the Half Moon Fire of 1929. (Land Records, Box 1, Folder 32. (GPA)). Mrs. Kelly misspoke when she said the railway bought the hotel; it had acquired the lease to run it when the government bought the property from John and Olive Lewis in 1930.
25 Frank Kellenbeck does not know which cabins were built when, but believes that “00” was the last to be constructed, and that Cabin 8 and the Bay Cabin were among the earliest. The last may have been built in 1935 by Vern Kelly. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 6
Flathead County, Montana
and retains its log root cellar built into the bank behind the cabin.26 Sherburne had apparently squatted on Geduhn land. Kelly offered him the cabin, where he also kept chickens.27 Kelly drew water for the cabins off the stream northeast of the developed area; he set a turbine downstream of the water intake to power the generator providing electricity to the cabins.28 In front of the Big House, in the open area leading down to the lake shore, Helen Kelly maintained a large flower garden that many remember as being very colorful and beautiful. Privies lined the slope above the camp drive running behind the backs of the cabins.
Until August 1933, Kelly’s Camp could only be reached by boat. A road running as far as the Wheeler Camp, contiguous to the Lake McDonald Ranger Station, stopped about two miles short of Kelly’s. It is unclear what role the park agreed to play in pushing the road through to Kelly’s. The Lake McDonald Ranger Station log records that Frank Kelly and Horace Chadbourne did much of the hard labor, starting with “swamping a right of way” along the west shore on the 7th of November 1932. In the spring of 1933, they began clearing trees by blasting and pulling. The culvert was laid in July, and the government graded the road in August. 29 With vehicle access established, Vern Kelly built a two-bay log garage with a small gas pump where the camp drive met the new road.30 This would have made the “Emmeline” less critical to the camp’s daily routine, but Frank Kelly continued her run through the summer of 1934.
In January 1935, Frank and Emmeline Kelly died one day apart of a virulent pneumonia. Local lore relates that their bodies were stored in the attic until spring, but their son, Vern, wrote that Frank Kelly’s body was taken out the day after he passed away, and that while a blizzard intervened, his mother’s corpse was taken out four days later. The log kept at the Lake McDonald Ranger Station corroborates the difficulties in taking the Kellys’ bodies out in the snow.
Writing in March 1935, Vern Kelly noted that he had “had the logs out and foundation down for one cabin when the trouble [his parents�� pneumonia] came.”31 Possibly this was Cabin 8, built of peeled logs and with a different porch than Cabins 1 through 7. This may have been the last cabin built by the Kellys. By now deep in the Great Depression, Vernon Kelly settled into running his parents’ business, saying “I hope I can consider all of the folks’ old friends my friends. They [Frank and Emmeline] made a schedule of rates this coming summer and I am going to use them as they drew them up. At the present time only three cabins are reserved.”32 The lack of business may have prompted Vern Kelly to take the “Emmeline” out of service in 1936. The war brought additional lean years. In May 1942, he expected the summer to be “a blank,” due to gas rationing, although the Whitlaches, for whom Cabin 00 was built, and the Thompsons were booked.33
26 Joanne Hatalsan Holcomb, Interview by author, 22 July 2005. The root cellar behind the Big House is gone, but Gonhild “Bud” Henderson (Historical interview, 25 August 1977 (GPA)) recollected that Frank and Emmeline Kelly were very frugal and resourceful, spending about $125 on winter food to supplement the venison and pork mixture and canned huckleberries they put up each year.
27 One of Jess LaDow’s youthful recollections is of visiting Sherburne at the Bay Cabin. Interview by author, 24 July 2006. Taped for GNPA.
28 James R. McDonald, Historic Structures Survey, Glacier National Park, 1980, dates the generator house 1928, based on an interview with Sam Medlicott, a long time visitor, and at length, owner at Kelly’s Camp.
29 Senator Walsh, who owned a camp at the head of the lake, successfully brought to Congress a bill to construct the road from the Going-to-the-Sun Highway as far as the Wheeler Camp in 1921. Frank Geduhn noted that it was done by June 1922. In 1933, Frank Geduhn noted that the road had been extended down to Kelly’s Camp and Hollybourne by Horace Chadbourne and Verne Kelly, who cut the timber and blew out the stumps. The government graded the road. Ray Newberry, who kept the logbook kept at the Lake McDonald Ranger Station during this period recorded the road’s progress from November 1932 until it was graded by the government in August 1933. Logbook is in the GNPA.
30 Bill and Sue Medlicott Price, Interview by author, 22 June 2005.
31 Vernon Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 4 March 1935. L.O. Vaught papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA)
32 Ibid.
33 Vernon Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 25 May 1942. L.O. Vaught papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA). NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 7
Flathead County, Montana
The post-World War II era brought stability to the Kelly’s Camp business. In 1946, Vern Kelly wrote, “All of the (as we refer to the old timers) family will have their cabins if they wish as long as I am there and I fully expect to put in the rest of my time here and the place at the lake isn’t for sale, and I feel healthy. So we should have many more happy summers.”34 The younger generation of several of the families who had their cabins each year during the 1940s and 1950s and who now own cabins at Kelly’s Camp recount many stories of those happy summers.
During the 1950s and 1960s, there were as many as 40 children around Kelly’s Camp, drawn from the Kelly cabins, tent platforms at Hollybourne, the Sprague Creek campground, and Boses’ Inwood motel and cabins across the lake and north of the Lake McDonald Lodge. At Kelly’s alone, there were regularly two Medlicott, two Nelson, two Beck, six Kelly, four Hatalsan, and four Hammond children and grandchildren. They did a lot of waterskiing, hiking, playing cards, and tenting, including sleeping out near the mouth of Kelly’s Creek in a platform tent and using a flashlight to communicate in Morse code from the dock in front of the Big House with the fire tower keeper on top of Mt. Brown to the east. Many of the families staying in the cabins gathered at the large table at the Big House, in the evening for cards and conversation. On Sundays, Merrill Nelson held a church service in the open air chapel, which was mandatory before waterskiing.35 John and Virginia Upjohn Hatalsan, Cecilia Chadbourne’s niece, and their four daughters lodged in Cabin 4. Their family socialized with numerous people, including the Kellys, the Chadbournes, camp owners at the head of the lake, and others across the lake near the hotel.36
Most of the Kelly’s Camp “families” had longtime connections with Kelly’s Camp and Glacier National Park. M.L. Staples, a seasonal ranger who taught school in Evansville, Indiana, in the winter, convinced Sam Medlicott, who worked next door at the YMCA, to try Glacier in 1937, and recommended Kelly’s Camp. The Medlicotts spent nearly every summer through the last years of the Depression and World War II, and every summer after that at Kelly’s Camp. Both of their daughters continue to spend summers at Kelly’s Camp, and now Phyllis Medlicott Cox’s children and grandchildren come as well. Staples probably also encouraged the Roses, also from Evansville, to vacation in Glacier. Mrs. Rose, now 89, honeymooned in Cabin 7, and her children and grandchildren come every year. The Becks came from Terre Haute, Indiana, and continued coming after they moved to California. The Nelson family, also from California, stumbled across Kelly’s Camp in the mid-1940s when they got lost while visiting Glacier National Park. They returned all or most summers after that.
Changes came to Kelly’s Camp in the early 1960s. Vernon Kelly died of leukemia in 1958. His widow Helen and their daughters Jean Kellenbeck Burk and Joan Berry ran Kelly’s Camp with little change for a few more years. In 1962, Helen Kelly sold land on the north side of the bay to Wendell “Teet” Hammond, who had worked at Kelly’s Camp. That year, he built two frame cabins now owned by his daughter. In 1963, Mrs. Kelly sold a lot south of the Bay Cabin to Edward and Mary Jane Theefs, and they constructed a frame cabin. In all three cases, these were relatively small buildings set back among the trees, sited in the earlier tradition. Beginning in 1964, Helen Kelly and her daughters began selling individual cabins and their lots to people who were longtime members of the Kelly’s Camp “family.” John and Virginia Hatalsan bought the Bay Cabin in 1965. By the end of 1969, Alfred and Bernice Rose owned Cabin 4, Merrill and Amy Nelson owned Cabin 5, Sam and Alys “Billie” Medlicott owned Cabin 6, and Robert and Wanda Beck owned Cabins 7 and 8.
Further changes came in the 1970s. The Becks sold their property to the Millers, a Montana ranching family. While Jean (née Kelly) Kellenbeck Burk continued to hold title to Cabins 00, 2, and 3, her sister Joan (née Kelly) Berry sold the Big House and Cabin 1 to the National Park Service, retaining a life lease, in 1988.37 The Nelsons sold Cabin 5 to the Medlicott daughters in the 1990s. In 2006, the ten rental cabins, the Big House, the
34 Vernon Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 25 March 1946. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA).
35 Susan Medlicott and Bill Price, Interview, 22 June 2005.
36 Joanne Holcomb, Interview by author, 22 July 2005.
37 Plat Book, Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 8
Flathead County, Montana
wash house, generator house, and the wood shop survive. The only buildings gone, aside from several disused privies, is the log, two-bay garage near the road. Cabins 5 and 6 were substantial remodeled between 2000 and 2005. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 9 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 9
Flathead County, Montana
Sources
Buchholz, C. W. Man in Glacier. West Glacier, Montana: Glacier Natural History Association. 1976. 3rd printing, 1999.
Harrington, Leona, et al. History of Apgar. Unpublished manuscript. [n.p., n.d.],
Historical Interview with Gonhild “Bud” Henderson (transcription), 25 August 1977. (Glacier National Park Archives (GNPA): West Glacier, Montana)
Holcomb, Joanne Hatalsan. Interview by author, 22 July 2005.
Kellenbeck, Frank. Interview by author. 19 July 2005.
Kellenbeck, Robert. Interview by author. 31 July 2005.
Lake McDonald Ranger Station Logbooks, 1932-1935. (GNPA)
Land Records Files. (GNPA)
McDonald, James R. Historic Structures Survey. Glacier National Park. 1980.
Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North. (Plat Room, Flathead County Courthouse, Kalispell, Montana)
Price, Bill and Sue Medlicott Price. Interview by author. 22 June 2005.
Subdivision Book “H.” (Plat Room, Flathead County Courthouse, Kalispell, Montana)
Vaught, L.O. History of Glacier. Unpublished manuscript. n.d. (GNPA)
Vaught Papers. Correspondence from Frank and Emmeline Kelly. Box 2, Folder 11. (GNPA)
-------. Correspondence from Verne and Helen Kelly. Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA) NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 10 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 10
Flathead County, Montana
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Property Owners Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 11
Flathead County, Montana
Property Owners
Tracts 1D, 1DA, 1GA
name/title: Frank Kellenbeck and Robert Kellenbeck, Jesse P. Todd and Nathan P. Todd street & number: P.O. Box 130444
city or town: Coram state: MT zip code: 59913
Tract 1G
name/title: Superintendent, Glacier National Park street & number:
city or town: West Glacier state: MT zip code: 59936
Tracts 1QA, 1Q
name/title: Bernice E. Rose Trust Agreement and and Alfred Rose street & number: 5713 Washington Avenue
city or town: Evansville state: IN zip code: 47715
Tracts 1N, 1QC
name/title: Donald M. and Phyllis Cox
street & number: 14 Beechwood Place
city or town: Watchung state: NJ zip code: 07060
Tracts 1M, 1QD
name/title: Mark D, Michael E. and John D Cox c/o William H. Price street & number: 650 Shorehaven Drive
city or town: Kissimmee state: FL zip code: 34759
Tracts 1J, 1QB
name/title: Douglas Miller, Bonnie Snavely, and Michael Snavely
street & number: 2270 Amigo Drive
city or town: Missoula state: MT zip code: 59802 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 12
Flathead County, Montana
Photographs
The following information applies to photographs 1 through 15 listed below:
Name of district: Kelly’s Camp Historic District
County and State: Flathead County, Montana
Photographer: Jessie Ravage
Date of photograph: July 2005
Location of negative: Glacier National Park Archives
Big House
View of east (front) and south sides of Big House from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.1
Wood shop
View of east (front) and south sides of wood shop
Photograph No.2
Cabin 00
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 00 from mouth of creek
Photograph No.3
Generator house
View of south (front) and west sides of generator house overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.4
Wood shed
View of south (front) and east sides of wood shed from behind Cabin 00
Photograph No.5
Wash house
View of north (gable end) and east sides of wash house from the north, standing in front of Cabin 00
Photograph No.6
Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4 (from foreground to background) looking south from in front of the Big House
Photograph No.7
Cabins 3 and 4
View of east (fronts) and south sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.8
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 13
Flathead County, Montana
Cabins 2 and 3
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.9
Cabin 5
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 5 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.10
Cabin 6
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 6 and its generator shed behind overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.11
Cabin 7
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 7 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east; part of Cabin 8 shows at right side
Photograph No.12
Outdoor chapel
View from east near the creek, looking up the slope
Photograph No.13
Privies behind Cabin 00
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 00
Photograph No.14
Privies behind Cabin 1
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 1
Photograph No.15
The following information applies to all photographs 16 through 24 listed below:
Name of district: Kelly’s Camp Historic District
County and State: Flathead County, Montana
Photographer: Lon Johnson
Date of photograph: May 2009
Location of negative: Glacier National Park Archives
Cabin 1
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 1
Photograph No. 16 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 14
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 2
View of east (front) side of Cabin 2
Photograph No. 17
Cabin 3
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 3
Photograph No. 18
Cabin 4
View of east (front) side of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 19
Cabin 4
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 20
Cabin 5
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 5
Photograph No. 21
Cabin 6
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 6
Photograph No. 22
Cabin 7
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 7
Photograph No. 23
Cabin 8
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 8
Photograph No. 24
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 15
Flathead County, Montana
Big House
View of east (front) and south sides of Big House from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.1
Wood shop
View of east (front) and south sides of wood shop
Photograph No.2 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 16
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 00
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 00 from mouth of creek
Photograph No.3
Generator house
View of south (front) and west sides of generator house overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.4 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 17
Flathead County, Montana
Wood shed
View of south (front) and east sides of wood shed from behind Cabin 00
Photograph No.5
Wash house
View of north (gable end) and east sides of wash house from the north, standing in front of Cabin 00
Photograph No.6 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 18
Flathead County, Montana
Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4 (from foreground to background) looking south from in front of the Big House
Photograph No.7
Cabins 3 and 4
View of east (fronts) and south sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.8 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 19
Flathead County, Montana
Cabins 2 and 3
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.9
Cabin 5
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 5 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.10 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 20
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 6
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 6 and its generator shed behind overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.11
Cabin 7
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 7 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east; part of Cabin 8 shows at right side
Photograph No.12 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 21
Flathead County, Montana
Outdoor chapel
View from east near the creek, looking up the slope
Photograph No.13
Privies behind Cabin 00
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 00
Photograph No.14 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 22
Flathead County, Montana
Privies behind Cabin 1
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 1
Photograph No.15
Cabin 1
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 1
Photograph No. 16 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 23
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 2
View of east (front) side of Cabin 2
Photograph No. 17
Cabin 3
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 3
Photograph No. 18 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 24
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 4
View of east (front) side of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 19
Cabin 4
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 20 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 25
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 5
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 5
Photograph No. 21
Cabin 6
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 6
Photograph No. 22 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 26
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 7
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 7
Photograph No. 23
Cabin 8
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 8
Photograph No. 24

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NPS Form 10-9003 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
REGISTRATION FORM
1. Name of Property
historic name: Kelly’s Camp Historic District
other name/site number:
2. Location
street & number: South of Kelly’s Camp Rd between Kelly’s Ck and bay S of cabins, Glacier National Park
not for publication: n/a
city/town: Lake McDonald vicinity: X
state: Montana code: MT county: Flathead code: 029 zip code: 59921
3. State/Federal Agency Certification
As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1986, as amended, I hereby certify that this nomination request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant nationally statewide locally. ( See continuation sheet for additional comments.)
________________________________________________________________ ____________________
Signature of certifying official/Title Date
Montana State Historic Preservation Office
State or Federal agency or bureau
In my opinion, the property ____ meets _____ does not meet the National Register criteria.
_______________________________________________________________________ ______________________
Signature of commenting or other official Date
_________________________________________
State or Federal agency and bureau
4. National Park Service Certification
I, hereby certify that this property is:
Signature of the Keeper
Date of Action
______ entered in the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ determined eligible for the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ determined not eligible for the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ removed from the National Register
______ see continuation sheet
______ other (explain)
Kelly’s Camp Historic District Flathead County, Montana
Name of Property County and State
5. Classification
Ownership of Property: Private; Public-federal Number of Resources within Property 27
Category of Property: District Contributing Non-contributing
Number of contributing resources previously listed 12 13 building(s)
In the National Register: 0 1 site(s)
1 structure(s)
objects(s)
Name of related multiple property listing:
Recreational camps on Lake McDonald, 1892-1970 14 13 TOTAL
6. Function or Use
Historic Functions:
DOMESTIC: Camp
Current Function:
DOMESTIC: Camp
7. Description
Architectural Classification:
MATERIALS:
OTHER: Rustic Style
Foundation: log, concrete
Walls: log, frame
Roof: cedar shakes, metal, asphalt shingles
Other: brick
Narrative Description:
Kelly’s Camp, located on the west shore of Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, Flathead County, Montana, developed as a summer tourist cabin resort from an earlier homestead claim. It retains integrity of design, materials, setting, and workmanship dating to its development as a cabin resort (ca.1905-1935) even though the former 26-acre property is now divided into 23 parcels with eight different owners, including the federal government. Kelly’s Camp embodies roughly 2,400 feet of waterfront along Lake McDonald, including a small, shallow bay. Its entire length is fringed by a mixed coniferous forest, and most of the buildings are partially hidden from view from the lake by these woods. An unpaved access road runs behind the row of cabins, ending behind Cabin 00 at the north end. The camp is reached by a rough dirt road originating at the Going-to-the-Sun Road and paralleling the lake shore around the head of the lake.
The Kelly’s Camp Historic District encompasses twelve rustic log buildings overlooking the shoreline, including ten housekeeping summer cabins, a larger house, and a small cabin used as a washhouse. Frame buildings dating to the period of significance include a generator house, a shed, a pavilion used as a work shed, and ten privies. There is also an open air chapel reached by a wooden footbridge crossing Kelly’s Creek.
The Kelly’s Camp log buildings, excepting one, stand in a row set within the trees and facing the lake. Each rests on a banked foundation of doubled log piers; the outer piers support the log walls and the inner piers support the floor system. Open porches span the fronts, or lake sides, and provide views of the lake. Utility areas are placed at ground level at the back of each cabin. Most of the cabins have frame additions to the rear that house showers and toilets. The cabins retain brick or stovepipe chimneys, usually set near the center of the ridge, designed to draft woodburning stoves and kitchen ranges. Most of the log cabins retain their interior finishes. The inside surface of the log walls are hewn with a broadaxe or adze and the spaces between the logs are covered with narrow staves to create a fairly smooth wood surface. Interior partitions are stud walls with milled beadboard.
See continuation pages for Section 7 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Flathead County, Montana
Name of Property County and State
8. Statement of Significance
Applicable National Register Criteria: A and C
Areas of Significance: Entertainment/Recreation; Architecture
Criteria Considerations (Exceptions): n/a
Period(s) of Significance: ca.1894-1959
Significant Person(s):
Significant Dates:
Cultural Affiliation:
Architect/Builder: Frank Kelly; Verne Kelly
Narrative Statement of Significance
Kelly’s Camp is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A and C as a representative example of a cabin resort on Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, Flathead County, Montana. The Glacier National Park Multiple Property Document (MPD) for “Recreational Camps on Lake McDonald, 1892-1970” provides the historic context for the development of such wilderness recreational properties. Cabin resorts run by Harvey Dimon Apgar and Frank Geduhn opened on Lake McDonald before 1900. Other entrepreneurs, including Frank and Emmeline Kelly, followed in the early 1920s, capitalizing on increased automobile traffic in the park. They developed the resort called Kelly’s Camp on part of the tract on which Frank Kelly filed a homestead claim in 1894, and for which he received a patent for 55 acres in 1917. The Kellys sold the undeveloped southern half of the property to Fannie Hollingsworth in 1926.1 She transferred it to her daughter and son-in-law, Cecilia and Horace Chadbourne in 1927 and 1930. The MPD also describes the architecture associated with such properties on Lake McDonald. Like many cabin resort buildings constructed on Lake McDonald in this era, most of Kelly’s Camp’s buildings are log cabins constructed of locally available materials, augmented with milled lumber and fittings like sash, doors, and stoves. The Kelly’s Camp property continued as a single parcel until 1962, when Frank Kelly’s daughter-in-law and her daughters began dividing the property, selling most of the rental cabins to longtime visitors. Though the cabins now stand on individually owned lots, Kelly’s Camp retains an extraordinary degree of architectural integrity of design, materials, workmanship, setting, and feeling dating to its use as a cabin resort.
Summary History of Development
Frank Kelly came to the Lake McDonald region in 1893, at roughly the same time as fellow homesteaders Frank C. Geduhn and Denis Comeau and a little later than homesteaders Charles Howes and Milo B. Apgar. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, of Irish parents in 1855, Kelly worked primarily as a carpenter in the upper Midwest, but also as a raftman on the Mississippi. At nineteen, he moved to Minnesota. In 1883, he came west to Livingston, Montana, with the Northern Pacific Railroad. He also worked in California and Astoria, Oregon. Kelly came to the Belton area to run a portable sawmill for the Great Northern Railway, and staked his homestead claim on the west shore of Lake McDonald, about two miles from the north end, in March 1894,2 locating it in Lots 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 19 North.3 L.O. Vaught said that Kelly chose his homestead site in 1894 for its morning light, but the bay, the stream, and good timber must also have played a role in his choice.4
See continuation pages for Section 8
1 Fannie Hollingsworth, Journal for 1922-1926. (Private collection). Hollingsworth recorded making payments to Kelly and completing the documents in the fall of 1926, as the was completing her cabin at Hollybourne south of Kelly’s Camp.
2 L.O. Vaught, History of Glacier (unpublished manuscript, n.d): 439. (Glacier National Park Archives (GPNA): West Glacier, Montana)
3 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 19 North. (Plat Room, Flathead County, Kalispell, Montana)
4 L.O. Vaught, History of Glacier, 439. Kelly’s Camp Historic District Flathead County, Montana
Name of Property County and State
9. Major Bibliographic References
See continuation pages
Previous documentation on file (NPS):
Primary Location of Additional Data:
___ preliminary determination of individual listing (36 CFR 67) has been requested.
__ State Historic Preservation Office
___ previously listed in the National Register
___ Other State agency
___ previously determined eligible by the National Register
_x_ Federal agency: Glacier National Park Archives
___ designated a National Historic Landmark
___ Local government
___ recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey # __________
___ University
___ recorded by Historic American Engineering Record # __________
___ Other – National Archives, Denver
10. Geographical Data
Acreage of Property: 6.5 acres
UTM References:
Zone
Easting
Northing
(NAD27)
12
286190
5389796
Verbal Boundary Description
Kelly’s Camp lies between the shore and the Kelly’s Camp Road. It includes about one acre east of Kelly’s Creek and land west of the creek running to a property line northeast of a small bay. For the southwestern part of the district, the boundary is drawn following the camp drive running behind the cabins. The property includes the following parcels identified in the Flathead County plat book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North as 1D, 1DA, 1G, 1GA, 1J, 1M, 1N, 1Q, 1QA, 1QB, 1QC, 1QD, and 1QG.
Boundary Justification
The boundary is drawn to encompass the portion of Frank Kelly’s homestead that he developed as a seasonal tourist cabins resort called Kelly’s Camp.
11. Form Prepared By
name/title: Jessie A. Ravage
organization: date: 10 February 2006
street & number: 34 Delaware Street telephone: 607.547-9507
city or town: Cooperstown state: New York zip code: 13326
Property Owner
See continuation page
Additional Documentation
See continuation pages, photographs, and mapsNPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 7 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 1
Flathead County, Montana
Big House (ca.1910, contributing building): The Big House is the largest of all the buildings at Kelly’s Camp. It stands near the north end of the site. While it is set within the same line as the log housekeeping cabins, no large trees hide it from view from the lake. The remnants of a flower garden—iris, daisies, and poppies in cobblestone lined beds—struggle in the unmown grass. The Big House was built in two phases using unpeeled, notched western larch and red spruce logs daubed with clay from the lakebed. Both blocks stand on banked foundations of log piers. First built was the one-and-a-half-story, southeastern, frontal gable block. The later, side-gabled wing was added to its northeast side, and its roof was cross-gabled into that of the first block. The roofs have deep eaves with exposed log rafter tails. The roofs of both blocks are extended over a shed-roofed porch with log posts and a lattice railing spanning the front façade. This is reached by wood plank steps at each end of the porch’s deck. The Big House retains its regular fenestration plan with plain, rough board trim and six-light sash. Some sash are double hung, while others slide horizontally. Two wood doors with vertical panels enter the cabin from the porch. Both these and the sash appear to be mill stock. A small brick stove chimney straddles the ridgeline. Inside, the Big House has a large room on the main floor in the older block, which was used an office for running the resort. In the later block, the main floor has a large living area and a kitchen. Stairs run upstairs to bedrooms above.
Camp shop (ca.1910-20, contributing building): The shop is an open-walled pavilion built using log pole supports, log plates, and log purlins. The gable roof is covered with asphalt shingles. The north quarter was enclosed with clapboard siding (ca.1960) to provide closed storage space for tools. A wood plank door opens into it from under the roofed section. The structure was used for cutting and stacking firewood for the camp. It stands southwest of the Big House.
Cabin 00 (ca.1925-1930, contributing building): Cabin 00 is the northernmost of the housekeeping cabins and the only side-gabled one. It is constructed of unpeeled, notched western larch and red spruce logs daubed with clay from the lake bed. The shake roof was replaced with a metal roofing after a 2003 wildland fire threatened Kelly’s Camp. An open porch sheltered by a shed-roofed extension of the main roof is supported by log posts and spans the long wall on the lake side of the cabin. The porch railing is made of unpeeled logs, and plank steps are set at the end of the deck. The entrance door from the porch is offset and framed with rough cut boards, as are the window openings. The windows are paired two-over-two sash, some double hung and some in horizontally sliding casings. A second door enters the back, or non-lakeside, of Cabin 00, into a later frame toilet and bath area. The main entrance opens into a common area. A sleeping loft reached by narrow stairs occupies the north end of the building, with a bedroom below. The kitchen is at the back of the cabin.
Generator house (ca.1927, contributing structure): Northeast of Cabin 00, where the creek flows into Lake McDonald, is the gable-roofed frame generator house. It has vertical flushboard siding and an asphalt shingle roof. In the creek, a still-operating turbine powers the generator, which provides power to all the cabins.
Woodshed (ca.1910, contributing building): Behind Cabin 00 stands a single-story, windowless, gable-roofed shed sided with cedar shakes.
Shower and laundry house (ca.1905-1910, contributing building): Between Cabin 00 and the Big House, stands a small, single-story, gable-roofed cabin constructed of notched logs with a small frame addition to its northwest corner. The building has a shake roof and paneled wood door. Kelly descendants state that this was the homestead cabin, later redesigned as a shower and laundry house. The addition provided space for the hot water heater. Clothes lines of heavy wire strung along “trees” constructed of logs and boards stand nearby.
Root cellar (ca.1905-10, contributing building): Between Cabin 00 and the Big House are the remains of a log that was built into the slope. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 7 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 2
Flathead County, Montana
Southwest of the Big House, Cabins 1 through 8 stand in a row set behind the trees fringing the beach. All eight of these housekeeping cabins were designed for rental and built over a period of approximately fifteen years, from about 1920 to about 1935. Some are larger than others and have slightly different interior layouts. Except for Cabin 3, which is built of unpeeled cedar logs, and Cabin 8, built of peeled larch (a.k.a. tamarack) logs, these frontal gable cabins were all constructed of unpeeled western larch and red spruce logs and daubed with clay from the lake bed. Like the Big House and Cabin 00, they had hewn interior log walls and beadboard partitions. All have the characteristic two-part, log pier banked foundations and open porches set under the extended frontal gable roof. These porches are reached by plank steps on the outside and by center entrances from the cabin interiors. Stock paneled doors and a combination of two-over-two double hung sash on the façade and horizontal sash on the sidewalls were used originally, and most cabins retain these. A Kelly signature was the decorative row of narrow-caliper, unpeeled logs set in the gable end above the lakeside porch, matching the front porch railings.
Cabins 1, 2, 3 and 4 (ca.1920-1925, contributing buildings): These nearly identical cabins appear much as they did at the time of their construction. They retain their frontal gable forms, open porches facing the lake, and original fenestration using two-over-two sash and paired sliding sash set in frames with rough board trim. Their notched log walls retain the bark. The shake roofs were replaced with metal roofing in the 1960s. Small masonry chimneys are set at the center of the ridgelines. Each cabin has a small, shed-roofed frame addition spanning the back of the cabin to provide space for indoor plumbing. These were added in the post-World War II era. The addition on Cabin 4 has been replaced with a slightly larger new addition of board-and-batten siding and the roof extended to the north to create a cover for the door. Cabin 4 also has a shed roof addition spanning approximately one-half the length of the west wall. The addition is placed on log piers and the porch was extended across the front of the addition, thus maintaining the characteristic open porch facing the lake. The posts and porch railings replicate the historic design.
Cabins 5 and 6 (ca.1920-1930, non-contributing buildings): Cabins 5 and 6 remain, but no longer retain integrity of design. They were rehabilitated between 2000 and 2005 by individual owners using the same builder. Both sides of each cabin have substantial additions enclosed with drop siding and the historically visible log pier supports have been enclosed. The early, rear addition on Cabin 5 has been replaced with larger, more elaborate addition. Cabin 6 retains its open front and back porches with the characteristic Kelly lattice in the overhanging gable. Like many cabins around Lake McDonald, these cabins have new metal roofs.
Cabin 6 guest cabin and dog house (ca.2003, non-contributing building): This is a single-story, gable-roofed, frame cabin with drop siding on concrete piers. It has metal-framed windows and a sliding glass door.
Cabins 7 and 8 (ca.1920-1930, contributing buildings): Cabins 7 and 8 retain a high degree of architectural integrity. They retain their frontal gable forms, open porches facing the lake, and original fenestration using two-over-two sash and paired sliding sash set in frames with rough board trim survive. Both have open back porches set under the overhanging gables, which have vertical log details in their gable ends matching those on the fronts of cabins. Small masonry chimneys designed for stoves are centered on the ridges. Cabin 7 has recently been roofed with metal; cabin 8 is roofed with asphalt shingles.
Chapel (ca.1945, possibly earlier, contributing site): Kelly’s Camp also includes an open air chapel built on the north side of the creek and reached by a narrow wooden bridge over the watercourse. The chapel has half-log seats arranged in a rough circle facing a small lectern.
Privies (undated, non-contributing buildings): Five pairs of shed-roofed, frame privies stand on the slope behind Cabins 00, 2, 4, 5, and 6. These have flushboard siding and asphalt shingled roofs. Their date of construction is unknown. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 3
Flathead County, Montana
In 1897, Kelly married Emmeline Haworth, the widow of the Great Northern Railway’s section foreman at Belton and a relation of Jessie Cunningham, who married Harvey Dimon Apgar at the foot of the lake in 1901. The Kellys’ wedding picture was taken in Spokane, Washington, farther west on the Great Northern line. Mrs. Kelly had a three-year-old son, Vernon “Vern”, from a previous marriage, and Kelly adopted him at least so far as giving him his last name.5 One version of family lore relates that the Kellys spent their first winter of marriage living in the small log cabin that Kelly later remodeled as a wash house for his cabin camp,6 but Vernon Kelly told L.O. Vaught that they lived in Columbia Falls, where Frank Kelly worked as a sawyer in one of the sawmills in 1897, and that as a toddler he spent only the summer of 1896 on Lake McDonald until the family returned in 1904 or 1905. In between, Kelly worked three years in a mill in Sedan (now Kila), Montana (west of Kalispell on the Great Northern), and then moved farther west to Milan, Washington (north of Spokane), for at least another year.
The Kellys were back on the lake, however, for the winter of 1905-1906, when Frank Kelly built a 35-foot gas-powered launch, which he christened the “Emmeline” in honor of his wife. The new boat, launched from Apgar on the 1st of June 1906, provided Kelly with easy access to his claim, and also opened up commercial opportunities for him, as she filled the space left by the recently decommissioned “F.I. Whitney.”7 Kelly and Orville Denny became partners in the boat business about 1912 when Denny brought the “Cassie D.” to Lake McDonald and set up a dock in Apgar on land bought from Charles Howes.8 A few years later, John E. Lewis, owner of the Glacier Hotel across the lake from Kelly’s, bought out Denny’s share. Soon after, Kelly and Lewis built the “Ethel” at Apgar and launched her.9 Jointly, they brought a third boat, the “City of Polson,” from Flathead Lake a year later and renamed her “Lewtana.” They ran all four boats until about 1918, when Kelly bought out Lewis’s share.10 In January 1919, Kelly was seeking to sell his property, encompassing about three-quarters of a mile of lake frontage for $15,000, as a way to get out of the boat business, which was barely paying expenses. 11 Unsuccessful with the sale, Frank Kelly ran all four boats, sometimes with Vern, until the fall of 1921, when he sold the boat business alone to Rollo C. Abell. Frank Kelly bought the “Emmeline” back soon after, and she ran through the 1936 season, providing transportation to the Kelly’s resort.12
A chronology of the development of Kelly’s Camp is more elusive than that of the boat company, even though the two enterprises were almost certainly linked by developments prompted by park policy. Stephen Mather, the first director of the newly founded National Park Service in 1916, urged auto road development to
5 Gonhild “Bud” Henderson, Historical Interview, 25 August 1977. (GPA). Frank Kellenbeck, Frank Kelly’s great-grandson, has a copy of their wedding photograph.
6 Frank Kellenbeck, Interview by author, 19 July 2005. Another story, told by Frank’s brother, Robert, is that Frank Kelly was “shanghaied” from San Francisco and taken round the world via Cape Horn on a sailing ship, eventually landing in a British harbor, where he swam to an American ship, and begged to be signed on for the voyage to New York City. From there, he worked his way across the continent back to his claim on Lake McDonald. This story doesn’t fit with other seemingly more likely information supplied to L.O. Vaught by Vernon Kelly.
7 When John and Olive Lewis bought Snyder’s Glacier House hotel for the 1906 season, they discontinued the “F.I. Whitney” on Lake McDonald.
8 Subdivision Book “H,” Hollybourne. (Plat Room, Flathead County Courthouse. Kalispell, Montana)
9 The “Ethel” was named for one of the Kellys’ nieces, who was recorded living with them in the 1920 federal census. Mrs. Horace (Cecilia) Chadbourne, History of Apgar, [n.p., n.d.]. 52.
10 Entire chronology for the boat business is taken from: L.O. Vaught. Notes (or transcription) from Vernon Kelly, undated. L.O. Vaught papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GPA).
11 Frank Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 29 January 1919. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 2, folder 11. (GPA)
12 Notes from Vernon Kelly, undated. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 1, folder 11. (GPA). NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 4
Flathead County, Montana
accommodate the nation’s newest holiday trend.13 With the opening of the highway along the east side of Lake McDonald in the early 1920s, demand for boat transportation to the hotel and the Geduhn’s cabin resort at the head of the lake decreased, but interest in inexpensive cabin lodgings increased. Several Lake McDonald residents, Frank Kelly among them, began building to accommodate the influx of auto travelers in the 1920s.
Horace Chadbourne, whose mother-in-law Fannie Hollingsworth started visiting Kelly’s Camp in 1922,14 wrote that the Kellys had seven rental cabins by about 1925, and that they were building one per year.15 Working backwards, that might place the outset of the guest cabin business in 1919, about the time when Kelly was tiring of the boat business and considering selling out. That Kelly made no mention of guest cabins, an obvious asset, in 1919, suggests he had not begun building them. Further, the trouble Kelly had acquiring his patent suggests that he had done little to “improve” his claim, under the conditions of the Homestead Act of 1862. When the park was formed on the 11th of May 1910, homestead claims were no longer subject to settlement and entry. 16 While Kelly claimed settlement in March 1894, A.W. Swaney, Registrar of the Land Office noted that Kelly’s claim had been cancelled on the 27th of October 1909.17 Kelly was one of eight claimants for whom an act was proposed in Congress in 1914 that allowed their claims to be patented.18 Kelly duly received a patent for his holdings in Lots 2, 3, and 4 (totaling 54.86 acres), a reduction of his original claim, on the 10th of May 1917.19
Kelly sold two parcels totaling half of his patent to Fannie Hollingsworth, who stayed at Kelly’s Camp during the summer of 1922. They closed on 11 acres in Lot 4 in 192620, despite his earlier reluctance to divide his 55-acre tract, and the deed was filed in 1927.21 This purchase may have helped finance Kelly’s development of the camp in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Frank Kellenbeck says it helped buy the generator for the resort.22 Beginning in the fall of 1926, Fannie Hollingsworth began building the cabin called ��Hollybourne,” joining her surname with that of her son-in-law. Horace and his wife Cecilia Hollingsworth Chadbourne played a large role in its construction, along with Mart Sibley and Asa Powell, Sr., of Apgar. In 1930, Kelly sold the adjacent 17.87 acres to the north in Lot 3 to Chadbourne, which he platted into a 32-parcel subdivision, also called Hollybourne. Some of these lots hosted tent campers, but none ever had permanent buildings. By 1934, Cecilia Chadbourne held title to both parcels, when she sold them to the federal government, which agreed to a life lease for the property. She also held title to a homestead (Entry no.325) of 113.35 acres on the North Fork.23
Kelly’s Camp was in full swing by 1931, and the Kellys hoped to continue with it despite a policy established by federal legislation in 1917 to acquire all privately owned land in the park. Referring to federal appropriations
13 C.W. Buchholtz, Man in Glacier (West Glacier, Montana: Glacier Natural History Association, 1976, 3rd printing, 1999): 58.
14 Fannie E. Hollingsworth, Journal for 1922-1926. (Family collection)
15 Horace Chadbourne, History of Apgar, [n.p., n.d.]: 48.
16 James Wilson, Secretary, Department of Agriculture to the Secretary of the Interior, 8 June 1912. Land Records Files, Box 1, Folder 12. (GPA). According to this letter, all applicants on record who were described for examination and listing under the previous act of 11th of June 1906 (amendment to the Homestead Act of 1862) within the park were cancelled by the district forester and the applicants notified that said lands were no longer subject to settlement and entry.
17 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North. (Flathead County Courthouse, Kalispell, Montana)
18 Proposed Bill S.A. 320, 13 February 1914, to allow the homestead entries of Howard E. Jones, Ernest R. Henthorn, Daniel C. Doverspike, Ora Reeves, Louis N. Fournier, Pat Doyle, and Frank Kelly. Land Records, Box 1, Folder 16. (GPA)
19 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33, Range 18 North.
20 Hollingsworth, Journal.
21 Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North.
22 Frank Kellenbeck, Interview by author, 19 July 2995.
23 Mrs. Horace (Cecilia) Chadbourne, History of Apgar, [n.p., n.d.]: 52-53. While Mrs. Chadbourne’s contribution to the history suggests she and her husband built the cabin, Fannie Hollingsworth’s journal, written at the time, makes it clear that Hollingsworth was paying the bills, owned the land, and had hired Horace to work for her. The General Report of the Investigation of 50 Per Cent Purchases of Private Lands in Glacier National Park. USDOI, NPS, Glacier National Park. (GNPA), records the Chadbourne transactions. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 5
Flathead County, Montana
made in the early 1930s to purchase property at 50% valuation, Emmeline “Liney” Kelly noted in March 1931, “The government hasn’t offered to buy us out yet. We are sure that it would be hard for us to find a place we like as well or felt at home like we do hear [sic.].” Mrs. Kelly continued, saying that the 1930 Great Northern Railway’s purchase of the Lewises’ Glacier Hotel (now the Lake McDonald Lodge) would probably improve their business “as [the Railway’s] prices are almost too high for people who want to keep house.” At the end of the letter, she provided details of Kelly’s Camp’s lodgings:
Our small cottages are furnished with 2 full size beds and plenty of everything for a Party of 4. They are $60.00 a month $150.00 for season of 3 months our larger cottages have 3 full size beds and every thing for a Party of 6. They are $100.00 a month $250.00 for the season. We furnish every thing for housekeeping but your food. Wood and electricity included and I do the cabin laundry. Spring water piped to each cabin. Frank makes 1 trip a day across to the store at the hotel after groceries and mail. And any one that wants to go on that trip can, and there is no charge. The fare for all extry [sic.] trips is .25¢ each way per person. Frank makes an extry trip any time one wants him to.24
Kelly’s Camp’s present day appearance, with a few exceptions, was established by this period. Standing in a row facing the lake, there were nine or ten rental cabins, numbered 00 to 8, in addition to the Kelly’s Big House.25 Frank and Liney Kelly occupied the Big House year round in this period. Verne and Helen’s two daughters, Jean Kelly Kellenbeck and Joan Kelly Berry, grew up on at Lake McDonald, going to the Apgar School. When they entered high school, the younger Kellys moved into Kalispell in the winter as Apgar School only went to eighth grade. Further south around the bay were the Bay Cabin and the Chadbournes’ Hollybourne and Sun Cabin. One more Kelly building called the Halfway Cabin stood in between the Bay Cabin and the Chadbourne cabins.
All of the Kelly cabins were built to withstand difficult winters even though most were designed only for summer use. The outer log walls were supported on heavy cedar log piers, while the floor system rested on a separate set of piers to allow the floor to float independently of the walls and reduce buckling. With the exception of Cabin 3, which was built of cedar logs, the rest of the cabins were built using larch and some red spruce logs. The cabins were “chinked,” or daubed, using fine glacial silt from the bottom of the lake. All had cedar shake roofs, probably split from local trees. The cabins vary somewhat in size and style, but with the exception of the cross-gabled Big House and side-gabled “00,” they are all frontal gable buildings resting on piers with open porches facing the lake.
The cabins began with open back porches, most of which were later enclosed to house a shower and indoor sink sometime after the mid-twentieth century. Side additions were also later added to Cabins 4, 5, and 6. Two of the larger cabins (00 and 1) had sleeping lofts and a single bedroom on the main floor. Cabins 2, 3, and 4 were large cabins and had two bedrooms on the main floor. The smaller cabins (5, 6, and 7) probably had a bed in each of the two rooms on the main floor. Cabin 8 had just three rooms, including a bedroom. Like 00 and 1, the Bay Cabin had a sleeping loft. The latter cabin was used as a year round cabin during the 1920s by trapper Frank Sherburne
24 Emmeline Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 7 March 1931. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 2, Folder 11. (GPA). In a letter signed by A.E. Demary, Acting Director of the National Park Service dated the 15th of September 1930, he outlined the expenditure of nearly all of the $198,000 allocated by Congress to buy out inholders in 1930 after the Half Moon Fire of 1929. (Land Records, Box 1, Folder 32. (GPA)). Mrs. Kelly misspoke when she said the railway bought the hotel; it had acquired the lease to run it when the government bought the property from John and Olive Lewis in 1930.
25 Frank Kellenbeck does not know which cabins were built when, but believes that “00” was the last to be constructed, and that Cabin 8 and the Bay Cabin were among the earliest. The last may have been built in 1935 by Vern Kelly. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 6
Flathead County, Montana
and retains its log root cellar built into the bank behind the cabin.26 Sherburne had apparently squatted on Geduhn land. Kelly offered him the cabin, where he also kept chickens.27 Kelly drew water for the cabins off the stream northeast of the developed area; he set a turbine downstream of the water intake to power the generator providing electricity to the cabins.28 In front of the Big House, in the open area leading down to the lake shore, Helen Kelly maintained a large flower garden that many remember as being very colorful and beautiful. Privies lined the slope above the camp drive running behind the backs of the cabins.
Until August 1933, Kelly’s Camp could only be reached by boat. A road running as far as the Wheeler Camp, contiguous to the Lake McDonald Ranger Station, stopped about two miles short of Kelly’s. It is unclear what role the park agreed to play in pushing the road through to Kelly’s. The Lake McDonald Ranger Station log records that Frank Kelly and Horace Chadbourne did much of the hard labor, starting with “swamping a right of way” along the west shore on the 7th of November 1932. In the spring of 1933, they began clearing trees by blasting and pulling. The culvert was laid in July, and the government graded the road in August. 29 With vehicle access established, Vern Kelly built a two-bay log garage with a small gas pump where the camp drive met the new road.30 This would have made the “Emmeline” less critical to the camp’s daily routine, but Frank Kelly continued her run through the summer of 1934.
In January 1935, Frank and Emmeline Kelly died one day apart of a virulent pneumonia. Local lore relates that their bodies were stored in the attic until spring, but their son, Vern, wrote that Frank Kelly’s body was taken out the day after he passed away, and that while a blizzard intervened, his mother’s corpse was taken out four days later. The log kept at the Lake McDonald Ranger Station corroborates the difficulties in taking the Kellys’ bodies out in the snow.
Writing in March 1935, Vern Kelly noted that he had “had the logs out and foundation down for one cabin when the trouble [his parents�� pneumonia] came.”31 Possibly this was Cabin 8, built of peeled logs and with a different porch than Cabins 1 through 7. This may have been the last cabin built by the Kellys. By now deep in the Great Depression, Vernon Kelly settled into running his parents’ business, saying “I hope I can consider all of the folks’ old friends my friends. They [Frank and Emmeline] made a schedule of rates this coming summer and I am going to use them as they drew them up. At the present time only three cabins are reserved.”32 The lack of business may have prompted Vern Kelly to take the “Emmeline” out of service in 1936. The war brought additional lean years. In May 1942, he expected the summer to be “a blank,” due to gas rationing, although the Whitlaches, for whom Cabin 00 was built, and the Thompsons were booked.33
26 Joanne Hatalsan Holcomb, Interview by author, 22 July 2005. The root cellar behind the Big House is gone, but Gonhild “Bud” Henderson (Historical interview, 25 August 1977 (GPA)) recollected that Frank and Emmeline Kelly were very frugal and resourceful, spending about $125 on winter food to supplement the venison and pork mixture and canned huckleberries they put up each year.
27 One of Jess LaDow’s youthful recollections is of visiting Sherburne at the Bay Cabin. Interview by author, 24 July 2006. Taped for GNPA.
28 James R. McDonald, Historic Structures Survey, Glacier National Park, 1980, dates the generator house 1928, based on an interview with Sam Medlicott, a long time visitor, and at length, owner at Kelly’s Camp.
29 Senator Walsh, who owned a camp at the head of the lake, successfully brought to Congress a bill to construct the road from the Going-to-the-Sun Highway as far as the Wheeler Camp in 1921. Frank Geduhn noted that it was done by June 1922. In 1933, Frank Geduhn noted that the road had been extended down to Kelly’s Camp and Hollybourne by Horace Chadbourne and Verne Kelly, who cut the timber and blew out the stumps. The government graded the road. Ray Newberry, who kept the logbook kept at the Lake McDonald Ranger Station during this period recorded the road’s progress from November 1932 until it was graded by the government in August 1933. Logbook is in the GNPA.
30 Bill and Sue Medlicott Price, Interview by author, 22 June 2005.
31 Vernon Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 4 March 1935. L.O. Vaught papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA)
32 Ibid.
33 Vernon Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 25 May 1942. L.O. Vaught papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA). NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 7
Flathead County, Montana
The post-World War II era brought stability to the Kelly’s Camp business. In 1946, Vern Kelly wrote, “All of the (as we refer to the old timers) family will have their cabins if they wish as long as I am there and I fully expect to put in the rest of my time here and the place at the lake isn’t for sale, and I feel healthy. So we should have many more happy summers.”34 The younger generation of several of the families who had their cabins each year during the 1940s and 1950s and who now own cabins at Kelly’s Camp recount many stories of those happy summers.
During the 1950s and 1960s, there were as many as 40 children around Kelly’s Camp, drawn from the Kelly cabins, tent platforms at Hollybourne, the Sprague Creek campground, and Boses’ Inwood motel and cabins across the lake and north of the Lake McDonald Lodge. At Kelly’s alone, there were regularly two Medlicott, two Nelson, two Beck, six Kelly, four Hatalsan, and four Hammond children and grandchildren. They did a lot of waterskiing, hiking, playing cards, and tenting, including sleeping out near the mouth of Kelly’s Creek in a platform tent and using a flashlight to communicate in Morse code from the dock in front of the Big House with the fire tower keeper on top of Mt. Brown to the east. Many of the families staying in the cabins gathered at the large table at the Big House, in the evening for cards and conversation. On Sundays, Merrill Nelson held a church service in the open air chapel, which was mandatory before waterskiing.35 John and Virginia Upjohn Hatalsan, Cecilia Chadbourne’s niece, and their four daughters lodged in Cabin 4. Their family socialized with numerous people, including the Kellys, the Chadbournes, camp owners at the head of the lake, and others across the lake near the hotel.36
Most of the Kelly’s Camp “families” had longtime connections with Kelly’s Camp and Glacier National Park. M.L. Staples, a seasonal ranger who taught school in Evansville, Indiana, in the winter, convinced Sam Medlicott, who worked next door at the YMCA, to try Glacier in 1937, and recommended Kelly’s Camp. The Medlicotts spent nearly every summer through the last years of the Depression and World War II, and every summer after that at Kelly’s Camp. Both of their daughters continue to spend summers at Kelly’s Camp, and now Phyllis Medlicott Cox’s children and grandchildren come as well. Staples probably also encouraged the Roses, also from Evansville, to vacation in Glacier. Mrs. Rose, now 89, honeymooned in Cabin 7, and her children and grandchildren come every year. The Becks came from Terre Haute, Indiana, and continued coming after they moved to California. The Nelson family, also from California, stumbled across Kelly’s Camp in the mid-1940s when they got lost while visiting Glacier National Park. They returned all or most summers after that.
Changes came to Kelly’s Camp in the early 1960s. Vernon Kelly died of leukemia in 1958. His widow Helen and their daughters Jean Kellenbeck Burk and Joan Berry ran Kelly’s Camp with little change for a few more years. In 1962, Helen Kelly sold land on the north side of the bay to Wendell “Teet” Hammond, who had worked at Kelly’s Camp. That year, he built two frame cabins now owned by his daughter. In 1963, Mrs. Kelly sold a lot south of the Bay Cabin to Edward and Mary Jane Theefs, and they constructed a frame cabin. In all three cases, these were relatively small buildings set back among the trees, sited in the earlier tradition. Beginning in 1964, Helen Kelly and her daughters began selling individual cabins and their lots to people who were longtime members of the Kelly’s Camp “family.” John and Virginia Hatalsan bought the Bay Cabin in 1965. By the end of 1969, Alfred and Bernice Rose owned Cabin 4, Merrill and Amy Nelson owned Cabin 5, Sam and Alys “Billie” Medlicott owned Cabin 6, and Robert and Wanda Beck owned Cabins 7 and 8.
Further changes came in the 1970s. The Becks sold their property to the Millers, a Montana ranching family. While Jean (née Kelly) Kellenbeck Burk continued to hold title to Cabins 00, 2, and 3, her sister Joan (née Kelly) Berry sold the Big House and Cabin 1 to the National Park Service, retaining a life lease, in 1988.37 The Nelsons sold Cabin 5 to the Medlicott daughters in the 1990s. In 2006, the ten rental cabins, the Big House, the
34 Vernon Kelly to L.O. Vaught, 25 March 1946. L.O. Vaught Papers, Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA).
35 Susan Medlicott and Bill Price, Interview, 22 June 2005.
36 Joanne Holcomb, Interview by author, 22 July 2005.
37 Plat Book, Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 8 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 8
Flathead County, Montana
wash house, generator house, and the wood shop survive. The only buildings gone, aside from several disused privies, is the log, two-bay garage near the road. Cabins 5 and 6 were substantial remodeled between 2000 and 2005. NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 9 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 9
Flathead County, Montana
Sources
Buchholz, C. W. Man in Glacier. West Glacier, Montana: Glacier Natural History Association. 1976. 3rd printing, 1999.
Harrington, Leona, et al. History of Apgar. Unpublished manuscript. [n.p., n.d.],
Historical Interview with Gonhild “Bud” Henderson (transcription), 25 August 1977. (Glacier National Park Archives (GNPA): West Glacier, Montana)
Holcomb, Joanne Hatalsan. Interview by author, 22 July 2005.
Kellenbeck, Frank. Interview by author. 19 July 2005.
Kellenbeck, Robert. Interview by author. 31 July 2005.
Lake McDonald Ranger Station Logbooks, 1932-1935. (GNPA)
Land Records Files. (GNPA)
McDonald, James R. Historic Structures Survey. Glacier National Park. 1980.
Plat Book for Section 15, Township 33 West, Range 18 North. (Plat Room, Flathead County Courthouse, Kalispell, Montana)
Price, Bill and Sue Medlicott Price. Interview by author. 22 June 2005.
Subdivision Book “H.” (Plat Room, Flathead County Courthouse, Kalispell, Montana)
Vaught, L.O. History of Glacier. Unpublished manuscript. n.d. (GNPA)
Vaught Papers. Correspondence from Frank and Emmeline Kelly. Box 2, Folder 11. (GNPA)
-------. Correspondence from Verne and Helen Kelly. Box 1, Folder 11. (GNPA) NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Section number 10 Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 10
Flathead County, Montana
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Property Owners Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 11
Flathead County, Montana
Property Owners
Tracts 1D, 1DA, 1GA
name/title: Frank Kellenbeck and Robert Kellenbeck, Jesse P. Todd and Nathan P. Todd street & number: P.O. Box 130444
city or town: Coram state: MT zip code: 59913
Tract 1G
name/title: Superintendent, Glacier National Park street & number:
city or town: West Glacier state: MT zip code: 59936
Tracts 1QA, 1Q
name/title: Bernice E. Rose Trust Agreement and and Alfred Rose street & number: 5713 Washington Avenue
city or town: Evansville state: IN zip code: 47715
Tracts 1N, 1QC
name/title: Donald M. and Phyllis Cox
street & number: 14 Beechwood Place
city or town: Watchung state: NJ zip code: 07060
Tracts 1M, 1QD
name/title: Mark D, Michael E. and John D Cox c/o William H. Price street & number: 650 Shorehaven Drive
city or town: Kissimmee state: FL zip code: 34759
Tracts 1J, 1QB
name/title: Douglas Miller, Bonnie Snavely, and Michael Snavely
street & number: 2270 Amigo Drive
city or town: Missoula state: MT zip code: 59802 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 12
Flathead County, Montana
Photographs
The following information applies to photographs 1 through 15 listed below:
Name of district: Kelly’s Camp Historic District
County and State: Flathead County, Montana
Photographer: Jessie Ravage
Date of photograph: July 2005
Location of negative: Glacier National Park Archives
Big House
View of east (front) and south sides of Big House from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.1
Wood shop
View of east (front) and south sides of wood shop
Photograph No.2
Cabin 00
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 00 from mouth of creek
Photograph No.3
Generator house
View of south (front) and west sides of generator house overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.4
Wood shed
View of south (front) and east sides of wood shed from behind Cabin 00
Photograph No.5
Wash house
View of north (gable end) and east sides of wash house from the north, standing in front of Cabin 00
Photograph No.6
Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4 (from foreground to background) looking south from in front of the Big House
Photograph No.7
Cabins 3 and 4
View of east (fronts) and south sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.8
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 13
Flathead County, Montana
Cabins 2 and 3
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.9
Cabin 5
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 5 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.10
Cabin 6
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 6 and its generator shed behind overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.11
Cabin 7
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 7 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east; part of Cabin 8 shows at right side
Photograph No.12
Outdoor chapel
View from east near the creek, looking up the slope
Photograph No.13
Privies behind Cabin 00
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 00
Photograph No.14
Privies behind Cabin 1
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 1
Photograph No.15
The following information applies to all photographs 16 through 24 listed below:
Name of district: Kelly’s Camp Historic District
County and State: Flathead County, Montana
Photographer: Lon Johnson
Date of photograph: May 2009
Location of negative: Glacier National Park Archives
Cabin 1
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 1
Photograph No. 16 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 14
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 2
View of east (front) side of Cabin 2
Photograph No. 17
Cabin 3
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 3
Photograph No. 18
Cabin 4
View of east (front) side of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 19
Cabin 4
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 20
Cabin 5
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 5
Photograph No. 21
Cabin 6
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 6
Photograph No. 22
Cabin 7
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 7
Photograph No. 23
Cabin 8
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 8
Photograph No. 24
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 15
Flathead County, Montana
Big House
View of east (front) and south sides of Big House from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.1
Wood shop
View of east (front) and south sides of wood shop
Photograph No.2 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 16
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 00
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 00 from mouth of creek
Photograph No.3
Generator house
View of south (front) and west sides of generator house overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.4 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 17
Flathead County, Montana
Wood shed
View of south (front) and east sides of wood shed from behind Cabin 00
Photograph No.5
Wash house
View of north (gable end) and east sides of wash house from the north, standing in front of Cabin 00
Photograph No.6 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 18
Flathead County, Montana
Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 1, 2, 3, and 4 (from foreground to background) looking south from in front of the Big House
Photograph No.7
Cabins 3 and 4
View of east (fronts) and south sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.8 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 19
Flathead County, Montana
Cabins 2 and 3
View of east (fronts) and north sides of Cabins 2 and 3 from Lake McDonald
Photograph No.9
Cabin 5
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 5 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.10 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 20
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 6
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 6 and its generator shed behind overlooking Lake McDonald to the east
Photograph No.11
Cabin 7
View of west (back) and north sides of Cabin 7 overlooking Lake McDonald to the east; part of Cabin 8 shows at right side
Photograph No.12 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 21
Flathead County, Montana
Outdoor chapel
View from east near the creek, looking up the slope
Photograph No.13
Privies behind Cabin 00
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 00
Photograph No.14 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 22
Flathead County, Montana
Privies behind Cabin 1
View of east (fronts) and north sides of pair of privies on slope north of Cabin 1
Photograph No.15
Cabin 1
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 1
Photograph No. 16 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 23
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 2
View of east (front) side of Cabin 2
Photograph No. 17
Cabin 3
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 3
Photograph No. 18 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 24
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 4
View of east (front) side of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 19
Cabin 4
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 4
Photograph No. 20 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 25
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 5
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 5
Photograph No. 21
Cabin 6
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 6
Photograph No. 22 NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 10-90)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register Of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
Photographs Kelly’s Camp Historic District Page 26
Flathead County, Montana
Cabin 7
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 7
Photograph No. 23
Cabin 8
View of east (front) and north sides of Cabin 8
Photograph No. 24